HellGate: Sight Seeing

Piccadilly Circus (in a bit of a state after the demons started partying there..)



The Houses of Parliment (as viewed from a drained River Thames basin)



This next shot doesn't do the scale of the conflict justice, but my task was to help the local Templars out defending an area in the basin of the Thames river, activating the shock turrets, whilst chipping away at the horde of Vortex Guardians that were swarming the area.



You can see the shock turrets laying electricity streams onto the giants, and the downed templars, I'm just about to run in and start hacking at their shins, if I can find some medi-stims in my armour pockets.

Lastly a shot of how not to take down a flying Ravager. These demonic vermin, scurry about avoiding your blades, and then pounce a long distance at your face..

Hellgate

The more I play Hellgate, the more I fall in love with it. I'd sort of sidelined it, after the beta, as a distraction that was ultimately souless. As an FPS it is poor. If your'e wanting to play this game in first person then you're probably coming at if from the wrong angle, buy Bioshock, or Timeshift, or Blacksite, they'll probably deliver in the first person shooting department tenfold over Hellgate. Wheelmouse your expectations backwards, and take on the third person perspective, better still take up a tech sword, splash damage boomstick or kit yourself out with some attack droids and inhibitor drones.. and you'll be ready to take on Hellgate as the action fest it is meant to be.

This is Diablo. In the future. But with the demons. And guns. And robots. Played in sumptious 3d gore-o-vision. There are six classes on offer, which all play different enough to warrant your exploration of them. The game provides London tube stations as hubs for you gather quests and tweak your kit, with generated instanced quest locations to dive into and test out your latest action hero. The game has single player and multiplayer modes, both of which follow the same storyline, and quest progression. However the multiplayer mode allows you to group up with others. Although it offers a paid subscription for additional functionality in the multiplayer game, this is probably only something Hellgate fanatics will bother with. You get 2 character slots for single player and 3 character slots for the multiplayer game - so your average Joe will have enough slots just out of the box, to explore most of the game with the classes they want. The nutters who want to pay the subs fee, get another 20 odd slots, can make guilds, can hold more items in their stash and inventory, as well as download content that has been promised in the future.

So, taking on the demonic hoards, whether single player or solo-ing on a multiplayer server, is a rewarding affair, mainly because you get frequent rewards, theres a lot to tinker with in terms of item upgrading with slotted additions, item breakdown to constituent parts, and the forging of new items from those parts. Theres always something to tweak after each high octane blast of action. And the station hubs provide more or less everything you need for that tinkering process. You'll also be climbing the skill tree, slowly but surely, experimenting with new skills, seeing how it fits in with your overall idea of the character. I think the most rewarding experience in the game, is taking on a new skill that sounds "cool" and then taking that skill out and seeing where it fits in to the chaos of the combat. Grabbing a high arc swing of your sword that is meant to take down otherwise unreachable enemies in flight, and then scrapping with a room full of sonic bats, and dropping high arc's, to see your futuristic character leap into the air, and slash her weapons hard down grounding the bat, and finishing him in one swing.

The damage caused by the weapons can be quite specific, such as fire direct, or electric splash, so its worth having an array of specifc weapons set up to tackle certain enemy situations. Tailoring the spectrum from close panic striken direct damage, to rocket launchers that hit floating entities, and fire splash guns that lay a carpet of napalm for that added area effect, slowly gnawing away at the enemy, slowing them down and controlling the flow of seemingly endless minions of beelzebub. I think one of things that strikes you as you play through, is the variety of attacks coming from the enemies side, and the variety on offer from the player side to counter this. Theres nothing that new about roaming hordes, mini bosses, and then lovely tough bosses to take on. The areas are fairly consistent, broken streets of London, underground tunnels and warehouses, or staggeringly epic halls of hell - but a lot of the time the area adds a hint of flavour to the combat, but isn't the main thrust of the dish, its the combat that slaps your tastebuds around and satisfies you at the end of the meal.

There are mechanisms in place, common to MMO's, for travelling swiftly through the world - station terminals that will port you from station to station, as long as you've visited it before. There are recall gadgets for piping yourself out of an instance temporarily (or not) - so you can complete that quest, tinker with your set up, sell up etc. Although some instances have recall blocked.. if they're end quest lines, or boss levels. Death is handled in a way that doesn't seem to harsh, you can pay a sum of money to resurrect where you are, or you can enter the current instance as a ghost at the beginning, and then you can be resurrected when you get back your deathstone.

The game seems to have some sort of memory leak at the moment, so after a few hours play, shutting it down, your system will need a reboot for it to start performing again. There are moments of intense slow down, which is a shame. Because a lot of the time it does come across as stunning to look at, with lots of atmospheric lighting and weapon/spell effects on the go.

There doesn't seem to be an online community as such, the time I've spent on the EU server, has resulted in lots of silence, no co-operation, only one group. The grouping tactics haven't yet revealed themselves to me. Apart from melee characters get in up close and personal, and ranged ones don't. However, I can see this game being very enjoyable if a small group of friends decide to take it on, with characters all levelling at the same pace, enjoying the thrill of the action as they progress together through its challenges. Whether MMO style guilds and co-operation takes off, I'm not sure.

So, I reckon Hellgate is pushing the action RPG onwards, taking what Diablo did so well, but twisting it third person, removing the endless clicks, and giving it almost an MMO lick of paint - but with a candidate for "twitch" action mechanics on offer rather than your usual queues of special attack keys. This is the new Anarchy Online. Sci Fi action in bucketloads. But at your own pace. In your own futuristic armour. Lovely Jubbly.

The Witcher

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=86156

An action RPG, using the much enhanced Aurora toolset 2007(NWN2), so you can play it top view (diablo style) or Over the Shoulder OTS (almost Gears of War style). The world is beautifully realised, much more grittier and realistic than Two Worlds (or even Oblivion), with a strong storyline by Andrzej Sapkowski (http://tinyurl.com/2k6gch ) behind it. I've only dabbled in it for an hour or two, but it does seem to be another sound action orientated "free roaming" RPG game with good presentation and a selection of unique skills to explore.

The one area that is difficult to get to grips with is the combat mechanics. Basically if you're in OTS mode, you expect it to play out weapon strikes by clicking and holding your left and right mouse button.. but since its all based around a point and click mechnism from a top down perspective, to get the hang of it, you simply click the opponent at the appropriate time, to build up a chain of weapon swings. So it's not entirely free form and real time as such. You tap out the battles key strokes, when your icon turns into a flaming sword. Get the tap wrong, and you lose the chain, and sometimes can fumble the strike.. initially I struggled to understand this mechanism. And I would almost constantly be interupting my own attacks, making me seem inept at battle. But as you get into a rhythm with the game, it starts to click (forgive the pun) and you see how this almost turn based sort of timed combat actually works and is very cinematic and pleasing to watch. If you play it in top down mode, and you've played NWN/NWN2 you should find the combat easy to slip into to. I think its just the perspective change, and your expectations of real time sword swinging conflict with this "rhythm tap" style game.

Did I mention its an 18? And theres every encouragement for you to get drunk and have intercourse with some of the female NPC's you come across? It's all very artistically done, and I'm pelased it has such an adult approach to the gritty fantasy world. It kind of makes it a bit more exciting to be honest. In fact some of your key combat skills rely on you being drunk to perform them! Now then!

Well I've only scratched the surface of the game really, there seems a complex alchemical system built into the game for potion creation, the day and night phases of the world affects the encounters you have, and the starting quests are full on, no gentle lead in really, which is good.

I think if you like action RPG's, such as Two Worlds, Diablo, you'll like The Witcher.. even those of you who fawned over Oblivion will see this game has merit. Whether you can get on with the Aurora way of combat, is another matter though. But as jarring as it is at first, I can say after 15 minutes or so you should slip into it with ease..

Eye of Judgement

Well this sort of game is right up my street, and its easy for me to see why it causes a lot of excitement, real cards initiating on screen summonings.. move over Yu-Gi-Oh! If you want a totally unbiased and well balanced review, then look away now. I must confess I am a card-a-holic. I love everything to do with cards. I have collected weird and wonderful variations on playing cards, I have buckets of collectable and non-collectable card games. I'm a recovering Magic the Gathering Online user. I've dabbled in Decipher's Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game Online. So.. where does this leave me with Eye of Judgement? As a fan, I think. By default.

Having said this, I must say I was sceptical about the setup, it seems an awful lot of faffing about to knock out a game of cards... but then the draw of physically performing the summonings was too much to turn away from it. It was easy enough to get the thing hooked up, apart from the folded creases in the material playmat, which irritated me more than the camera. The tutorial videos went through the whole process from setup, to play. Sometimes, being a bit too thorough in their slow paced re-iteration of the same facts. I was dying to jump in and get started, but I forced myself to watch their videos... so I wouldn't hit the game confused in anyway whatsoever.

The cards themselves were a bit of a disappointment, mainly because the artwork is contained in a very small band across the center of the card, with lots of seemingly extraneous fluff and whitespace, with the runic "bar codes" at the top and bottom of the card. The card text is tiny too. A "squinter" as us oldies call it. So I'd prefer more outlandish splash of artwork, but presumably that might hinder the card recognition system. And still, you're seeing all the 3d renderings moving about on screen after a summoning, so you don't need too much artwork on card. I suppose coming from a card loving background, an expectation to see some luscious art in hand was mistakenly there. But I'd have made the text a lot bigger. Because you use that when deciding on which card to lay from your hand.

My first game against the COMP was a bit of a disaster. In terms of strategy and winning. I lost. But I must say, the thrill of laying cards down and performing summonings physically, rather than with the controller, is very tangible. I suppose it takes the best from both worlds, proper card battling at a table, and computer controlled card battling, and melds them together. The game itself, is played out on a small board, made up of 9 square "fields", and comes across as a more complicated version of noughts and crosses really. But the complexities are layered on in terms of elemental field types (each square possessing two elements, one on its upper face and one on its underside) - water, fire, earth, wood - where summons are affected by the elemental type of the field they are placed upon. Other complexities involve direction of attack, and vulnerability of back attacks. Some of the summons have multi-directional attacks, some include direction changing in their attacks. Spell cards add to this by flipping the fields and changing the elemental field type, or changing the direction of a unit. So from such a small play area, there are quite a few options and strategies that can be built upon to make sure you secure the 5 fields out of the 9 to win the game.

The battles themselves are often a simple animation and the resulting attack and defense numbers are resolved. Not as elaborate as one would have liked, but the battle animations are functional, and you do get to see your units rendered and in motion. If a unit is killed, you have to remove the card from the play area. There are four special action cards that you use to perform things like designate a target of attack, or to end your turn. You have 30 cards in your play deck, and you can buy boosters and themed decks (from early November allegedly) to tweak your deck. In the box off the shelf, you get 30 cards in a starter deck and a booster with 8 random cards. So with each box you do have a slight amount of variation from the rest of the people who bought the game. I can't see me delving into buying a lot of booster packs, and what not, trying to compete online, because thats not really where I derive pleasure from such games.

Anyway, Eye of Judgement is a niche novelty product, and in its current state, it has enough going for it, to provide a rather entertaining distraction from your normal console gaming. I can't see it winning over any of the casual gamers, because of the strategy elements and the involved setup to play it. But it does serve as a card lovers wet dream, and so far the AI opponents set to beginner have given me the run around once or twice, so there is mileage there in just the single player experience. I've yet to take it online and play someone who is as daft as me for buying it, but thats planned. For the online experience, you have to scan your cards in to a custom play deck, and then as you are playing an opponent the game itself will shuffle your custom deck and tell you which card to draw next, preventing player cheating at stacking the cards. Having to shuffle through your 30 cards to find the next draw does seem to go against normal play, but I can see in the interest of fairness its the only way it could be implemented easily.

Right, I'm off to have another wet dream, and summon some bikini clad elven archers...

Depths of Peril

http://www.depthsofperil.com/

Take a fairly rough around the edges Diablo II clone, add to it some 4X style diplomacy and conquest, and you have Depths of Peril. It's an intersting idea, taking your standard click based hack and slash action RPG, and meld it with a faction based trade and conquest ethos. Every game you play, you set the parameters for the world, the
difficulty of the monsters, the number of opposing factions to your own - and then you forge a hero to go out into these areas to perform quests from the settlement hub, to level up, gains new skills, gain influence, cashand loot - as well as try to recruit others to your party and your faction (or in game its called Covenant). Once you've got a few members, and you've decorated your Covenant hut with relics and tomes of knowledge, plus placed some guards to defend the place. You can begin to start allying and ganging up on some of the other Covenants who are AI controlled factions, running similar heros and recruits around the world trying to gain the most influence and power and utterly destroy the other factions. If you are Allied with other factions just make sure when you destroy the bad guys, you have the top level of influence within your alliance, so that you can claim the win.

Despite the 1990's graphics, it can be quite involving when you begin to use your hack and slash hero, to stock up your hut based barbarian "empire". I like the scope of the game, to make a balance between the decidedly average (in terms of graphics and complexity of quests) killing and questing sprees and the empire building (basically collecting bonuses and hired hands), with the diplomacy of joining some factions together to then turn and wipe out the weaker ones. Good effort on the hybrid gaming idea.

Geon: Emotions

Its a weird one, it combines a few elements of other games into the gameplay, all played out on a reversable map area made of squares sometimes twisted into loops and ramps etc..

.. essentially you have to ..

collect pills to fill a meter
collect "emotion" power ups (you can only have one at any time)
when your meter is full you have to get to the edge of a map and flip over, making a run towards the goal area (usually in the center of the maps) to score.
All the while keeping an eye on your opponent who is doing the same, to try and score in your goal, except he's on the reverse side of the map, and you should be able to peek him and his whereabouts through the semi-transparent tiles.

I think the key to it is, using a logical path through the pills to make sure you've easy and quick access to the goal and also to keep your eye on the opponent, if he's filling up his pill meter faster than you, its key you hit him with something that will suck it back down again. Even on the smaller areas it is tricky to collect and watch your opponent at the same time. I'm sure after a good few plays I'll get the hang of it.

The Emotion power ups, have different functions, like the blast through one that allows you to stomp the pills out of your opponent if he's in your vicinity on the opposite side of the map/track. There are ones that obscure the tiles, ones that allow you to speed ahead, and some powerslide into your opponent. Basically most of them are spoilers to make your opponent lose pills, or slow them down, like traps, or boosters to make you go faster, or shield you from your opponents spoilers. Getting to grips with these and their combinations is where the strategy comes into play.

Worth a look-see though, just for the oddness of the gameplay mechanics.. not a puzzler though, as such, think pacman/kulaworld but in a head to head to spoil or score goals against your opponent.

Two Worlds

Mayhap I verily like Two Worlds, Forsooth.

I was looking forward to this game, heralded as the next Oblivion.. not that I hold Oblivion up as the definitive console RPG game that everyone else seems to do. Anyway, I grabbed a copy of Two Worlds and hurdled into it with both feet fervently jabbing my medieval stirrups into my horses sides. I was bitterly disappointed to see such a awkward and ugly game crumble in my hands. The graphics just jarred with me from the off, nothing was crisp, nothing was easily read or sometimes even identified in the user interface. The single player character customisation was singularly under whelming, I couldn't change gender, the hairstyles available were all very similar and limited to about 5 in total - and the colours supported seemed even less. You could mess with the characters stature - chest size, arm length, eye shape, nose width and length but nothing seemed to define your character as anything but this bland hero. So onwards, into the tutorial, some combat, some magic thrown about, haphazardly as the targeting mechanism shifts according to distance away from you, rather than have any focus on one enemy. Some chatting with blurred and shaky NPC's, the chatting itself being laden thick with Ye Olde English, almost too thick for any credibility. Sort of the way people who don't play RPG's think all RPG's are voiced. The stuttering and frame rate issues didn't help, the blatant halts for environment loads had me wondering if my 360 had crashed at times. I did begin to enjoy the freedom and the combat, particularly once I'd secured a mount to ride. There is a decent game behind this cranky port, its not so much Oblivion as Diablo, which is a plus point in my opinion.

I decided I'd try out the PC demo, I wanted to see what this game looked like with graphics I could be comfortable with. Needless to say, the PC version of the game is crisp and looks the part. At last. The scenery looks good, the Armour and your character crisp and defined, and the interface isn't garbled and just plain works as you'd expect. I went out and bought the PC version. Very pleased with it. In terms of features it has a large continent that can be explored at your leisure, or in a focussed manner as you progress through the main quest line or side quests. It has a very pleasing combat mechanism, in that its easy to use and looks good in third person. The console ranged combat (archery and magics) targeting mechanism leaves a lot to be desired, but in the PC version is well suited. The archery in particular requires you to draw the bowstring and control the power of the shot, with many enemies attacking you from all sides this becomes key when you're timing your shot in between taking melee damage and the shot being interrupted. It has a readily accessible alchemical process for manufacturing your own custom potions. Harvest crystals/gems and plants from the world, and combine them freely. It also allows you to take multiples of existing equipment and combine them to boost the stats, so if you find another sword similar to the one you're wielding, pick it up and combine it, to gain an increase, this also applies to Armour, shields, quivers and jewellery. The magic system allows for a five school spell card collecting game, with each spell card also having booster cards that can be combined with them to tweak your spells. You find spell cards as loot, or you can buy them from vendors. One of the nicest features is the horse travel and combat. They have really taken horse travel to another level with this game, in that your horse feels and moves as a horse would. With it shying away from steep drops, and only following land it can feasibly travel. This can lead to some interesting refusal issues with such a undulating landscape, but it makes you truly appreciate the road system when you want your steed to get up to a proper gallop. Press forward to make the beast trot at a gentle pace, or hold forward to make it increase speed from a trot to cantor to gallop. You can also take swings at enemy from your horse if you are wielding a single handed weapon. Something which can be boosted with extra damage using the riding skill. I can imagine it being quite tricky to become proficient in mounted combat, mainly because of the larger turning arcs your horse has to take compared to most enemies. Imagine the jousting style PvP combat of the online game though. Which leads me on to ..

The 360's online mode allows you to create an RPG or PVP character (and this time you can select gender). There seemed to be "arenas" created where you could adventure or battle with your online friends. These arenas seemed to be various portions of the main map, but with invisible walls marking them off. The enemies present in these online worlds seemed to be much more difficult than the standard single play, presumably for team combat to play a part. I only tried one arena, as an RPG character and was promptly hacked to pieces for the next 10 minutes by another player, which didn't do a great deal to endear me to the experience. The PC's online mode seems to be more modelled on Diablo's Battle.net, and it is indeed called Warnet. You log in to the warnet servers and you enter into a multiplayer zone (usually a city) where you can assemble and buy/sell/tweak, then you take yourself off into an instance pretty much like the 360's arenas. With its own quests and harder enemies to battle. Returning to the city hub, you bring back your experience and equipment. I can see this aspect of the game, giving it some life in the online community, much like Diablo II did. And I'm itching to try it out to see if there are party mechanics at work here.

Overall I'd say Two Worlds is a great game, if you're looking for something approximating to a free-roam, story filled Diablo style game. It doesn't take itself too seriously as the dialogue can be very "hey nonny nonny", I believe intentionally so. If you like good visual combat, looting and tweaking a lot, and riding around a vast lush landscape on a horse ready for battle at any moment, then Two Worlds is worth a look. If you want to see it in its full glory I'd say buy the PC version. The 360 version will suffice if its all you've got. Is it the next Oblivion, probably not. But for me, its better than Oblivion. I'm likely to see this game through to the end, and the ride feels far more enjoyable.